The backsettlers showed very little concern for sexual privacy in
the design of their houses or the style of their lives. "Nakedness
is counted as nothing," Woodmason remarked, "as they sleep
altogether in common in one room, and shift and dress openly
without ceremony . . . children run half naked. The Indians are
better clothed and lodged."82 Samuel Kercheval remembered that
young men adopted Indian breechclouts and leggings, cut so that
"the upper part of the thighs and part of the hips were naked. The
young warrior, instead of being abashed by this nudity, was proud
of his Indian-like dress," Kercheval wrote. "In some few places I
have seen them go into places of public worship in this dress."83

Other evidence suggests that these surface impressions of
backcountry sexuality had a solid foundation in fact. Rates of
prenuptial pregnancy were very high in the backcountry higher than
other parts of the American colonies. In the year 1767, Woodmason
calculated that 94 percent of backcountry brides whom he had
married in the past year were pregnant on their wedding day, and
some were "very big" with child. He attributed this tendency to
social customs in the back settlements:

Nothing more leads to this than what they call their love feasts
and kiss of charity. To which feasts, celebrated at night, much
liquor is privately carried, and deposited on the roads, and in bye
paths and places. The assignations made on Sundays at the
singing
clubs, are here realized. And it is no wonder that things are as
they are, when many young people have three, four, five or six
miles to walk home in the dark night, with convoy, thro' the woods?
Or perhaps staying all night at some cabbin (as on Sunday nights)
and sleeping together either doubly or promiscuously? Or a girl
being mounted behind a person to be carried home, or any wheres.
All this contributes to multiply subjects for the king in this
frontier country, and so is wink'd at by the Magistracy and
Parochial Officers.84

Another factor was a scarcity of clergy to perform marriages in the
backcountry. But there was also a different explanation. Rates of
illegitimacy and prenuptial pregnancy had long been higher in the
far northwest of England than in any other part of that nation. The
magnitude of regional differences was very great. Rates of bastardy
in the northwest were three times higher than in the east of
England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Regional
disparities persisted from the beginning of parish registers to the
twentieth century. Historian Peter Laslett notes that "in early
Victorian times Cumberland . . . had the highest recordings [of
bastardy] in the country." Westmoreland was also very similar.
High rates of illegitimacy and prenuptial pregnancy in the
backcountry were not the necessary consequences of frontier
conditions. Puritans also moved onto new lands in the northern
colonies and continued to behave in puritanical ways. The same
continuities appeared among the Quakers when they moved to the
frontier. The sexual customs of the southern backcountry were
similar to those of northwestern England....85